bcmcknight77's Guide to Guardian Build
A few people made guides to guardians within a week of them coming out.
I felt there was still too much to learn about them before one could write a definitive guide.
I'm confident I have that knowledge now.
So here's what I've found:
Build #1: The Healer
This build requires every last stat point to be placed into Intelligence. This is contested by some, and I've never been able to figure out on what grounds. Putting any in vita doesn't make any sense. These guys are programmed to convert mana into life. Putting it in Intelligence will make your heals that much stronger, and by level 55 you'll have in the neighborhood of 5000 mana. To me, it turns into a basic math equation.
My guardian uses a great wild heal charm. Yes, I prefer heal or focused heal, but it's hard to turn down 199% EE. His heals do from 91-918 (1009/2= 504.5 average heal). the cost is 115 mana per use. Total mana 5422/115 (use) =
47 casts. (47)*(504.5) = 23,711.5 life. I don't think the extra 10 in vita particularly matters when you look at it that way. They aren't like mages that would only have 2000 life at that point.
The Healer's Gear
Weapon:
Heal Mastery. The end all-be all for guardians. You'll also be spending your time almost exclusively in the combs, so if you find a weapon that gives a big bonus to max life or mana, it helps.
Armor:
Two schools of thought--are you going to tank, or heal? If you have high EE/high dex armor (must be both), you'll want to tank:
Believe it or not, Heal mastery isn't the most important stats here. Find yourself some heavy plate with a ton of EE, and you'll save yourself a lot of mana on heals. While the Guardian is clearly designed to heal, he can also tank with the best of them. He is virtually impervious to all attacks except critical strikes because of his high intelligence and low dexterity.
I use level 35 plate with 100+ EE, and I only see two sort of hits--0 and 300+. The advantage is 1) Other members are more safe, and you can worry about watching your life and not theirs, and 2) You'll save on mana in the long run. All those hits for 0 that would have been hits for 100 really add up. You'll heal far less often. If you can find EE plate with Heal Mastery, dexterity or Max Life/Max Mana, all the better.
If, however, you have a friend who prefers to tank, you can sit in the middle comfortably with very high heal mastery (and bonus max mana if you can find it).
Charm:
Hmmm. I'm gonna go ahead and say a heal charm with as much EE as you can muster. Focused Heal or Heal are preferred, since consistency matters, but don't sacrifice effectiveness for consistency.
The Healer's Upside
You can go FAR in the combs with this set up. This is not for 2-wavers. This is for players who are trying to fight that 9th wave. Me and ONE other guy have been to wave 6 with this set up. Two guards and a lot of mana fish = 9th wave every time.
The Healer's Downside
This build is painful in solo. Painful may not be the word--I'm tempted to say impossible. You'll never die, but you get to the point where even normal mobs take an hour. Literally. I stopped soloing around level 30 when it took over 100 hits to kill a normal mob. Very vulnerable to critical hits. As I said earlier, I only see 0s and 300s for damage. Most of the time it's 0, but in wave 5, I've taken 3-4 critical hits at once, dropping me to half life. All the 0s make up for it, but it's something to be prepared to deal with. At later levels, it's going to get worse, and I'll never try a well with this build at high levels.